INSIDER'SACCESS

Liquid Lava: Yosemite's Firefall Is Back

VIVA Staff

Feb 17, 2017

Yosemite National Park is an outdoor icon known for its ancient sequoias, the towering cliffs of Half Dome, El Capitan, and its thousands of waterfalls – in addition to being the default wallpaper for Mac OS X desktops, of course. But out of all of these amazing points, there's only one spot you need to see during the month of February.

Horsetail Falls' natural beauty was recently caught on camera looking even more stunning than usual; instead of the usual blue water and white foam, the stream of water has been glowing with a mesmerizing shade of orange every evening. Dubbed the "Firefall" (but not to be confused with the man-made Firefalls of the late 1800s), the phenomenon is a result of the setting sun illuminating the waterfall at just the right angle.

The liquid lava illusion lasts for 10 minutes at a time, occurring for a couple of weeks each February. And of course, the Instagram snaps have been flowing in – meaning that if you want to catch this beauty for yourself IRL, there's no better time to make the trip out to Yosemite than now.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BQcO2BoFbfI/?taken-by=rayophotography13

https://www.instagram.com/p/BQjUzV_BQ8f/?tagged=firefall

https://www.instagram.com/p/BQlgMDjDT23/?tagged=firefall

https://www.instagram.com/p/BQlEOcdDMec/?tagged=firefall

Have you recently been somewhere cool like Yosemite and got some amazing footage of your adventures? Submit them to our new initiative #VIVAStories for the chance to win a $10,000 trip! Watch the video below for more deets, and enter now.